Douglas Jay. “Undercover for the United Church.” The Observer [United Church of Canada] 64, no. 6 (January 2001): 44–5. On Frye’s relation to the United Church of Canada.

Jean O’Grady. “Frye and the Church.” In Jeffery Donaldson and Alan Mendelson, ed. Frye and the Word: Religious Contexts in the Criticism of Northrop Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 175–86. On Frye’s love hate relationship with the United Church of Canada.

Russell Perkin. “Northrop Frye and Catholicism.” In Jeffery Donaldson and Alan Mendelson, ed. Frye and the Word: Religious Contexts in the Criticism of Northrop Frye. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. 187–202. On Frye’s conflicted relationship with the Catholic Church and its doctrines.

Ian Sloan. “The Reverend H. Northrop Frye.” In David Rampton, ed., Northrop Frye: New Directions from Old. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2009. 105–22. On the significance of Frye as a theologian and on his stance toward the church.

[I] meant to say too that it is belittling to dismiss so condescendingly the brightening of small corners of the world.

Was I condescending? I didn’t mean to be, and I am grateful that Jim Racobs recognised this. Certainly, individual Christians, and smaller religious communities do good. Why should I deny that, or be condescending about it? I shared, myself, in such communities, as an Anglican priest, and remember that participation with fondness. All that I pointed out was that, in practice, churches do not, as Williams claims, act in ways that are “consistently against coercion and institutionalised inequality.” I think this is demonstrably false.

For that reason I would want to question Frye’s conviction that “the only two cultural areas that gave hope for the potential transformation of human societies are art/literature and religion” — if, that is, that is what Frye thought (but see Veronica’s comment immediately above). This seems to me hopelessly wrong. To suggest that science, for example, has no potential for transforming human societies seems to me to be astonishingly short-sighted. And to think of religion itself — based, as religions are, on such diverse and conflicting histories, and tied up, as they all are, in hermeneutical knots — has much to contribute to the transformation of society, seems hopelessly parochial.

I admit to ignorance of Frye’s writings on social and religious themes — nor did I comment because of my familiarity with Frye or my commitment to his social vision — but it strikes me that much of his seminal work was done long before the religions began to meet in significant numbers in the same social and political space, where their conflicts and disagreements have become more immediately obvious. And, as Veronica points out just above, Frye’s own relationship with religion was not without its tensions. Like me, apparently, Frye read the gospels, not only with reserve, but discomfort. The contemporary social vision of Christianity is largely, I believe, the product of reading Christian texts in the context of the Englightenment, and today Christian renewal tends as often towards regression to a know-nothing fundamentalism, as it does to a reasonable and compassionate humanism. This is particularly obvious when it comes to the position of women — and their liberty rights with regard to reproduction — the acceptance of alternate sexualities, the rights of the dying, the indoctrination of children, and many other things that involve the apparent inability or reluctance of most religions to rid themselves of dogmatic baggage from the past.

“For an ordained United Church clergyman, Frye had a somewhat strained relationship with God and Christianity. ‘I find the Gospels most unpleasant reading,’ he wrote. ‘The mysterious parables with their lurking & menacing threats, the emphasis placed by Christ on a ‘me or else’ attitude, the displaying of miracles as irrefutable stunts’ — he found it all questionable. He wondered how long people could dodge the suggestion that the editorial shaping of Scripture was a fundamentally dishonest process.

He took a sharply critical view of the United Church itself. When he heard that a fellow Protestant had become a Roman Catholic, he became uncomfortable — not just because he thought the Catholics anti-liberal and anti-democratic but because ‘this fatuous United Church’ couldn’t begin to compete. Lacking intellectual integrity, it seemed to him no better than a committee of temperance cranks. Certainly he would never try to persuade anyone to become a member.

As for the Almighty, Frye believed that, ‘the worst thing we can say of God is that he knows all. The best thing we can say of him is that, on the whole, he tends to keep his knowledge to himself.’”

Fulford’s description does not support your thesis that in Frye’s view, “the only two cultural areas that gave hope for the potential transformation of human societies are art/literature and religion.”